Sir I personally feel that the fundamental of steemit is very very stron although I believe that it needs more improvement and at the moment the steem price is based on speculation only and we have not yet reached a point where steem price action is based on its utlity. So in that sense it has a long way to go. In terms of bot and self upvoting I think steemit should come up with a different algoritm, otherwise it will not be sustainable in the long run.
However there is much more hope in SMT and if SMT can go well, then it will be a good news or steem and also we can see steem to moon.
Very good article written by you added with facts and statistics.